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The Supreme Court's ruling Thursday overturning a ban on corporate political spending that had been in place for more than a century has left abortion-rights supporters jittery that the justices could be similarly prepared to upend the landmark Roe v. Wade decision the court handed down 37 years ago this week.

Activists see threat to Roe precedent

The Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday undercutting a ban on corporate political spending that had been in place for more than a century has left abortion-rights supporters jittery that the justices could be similarly prepared to upend the landmark Roe v. Wade decision the court handed down 37 years ago this week.

“Yesterday’s Roberts court decision, which exhibited a stunning disregard for settled law of decades’ standing, is terrifying to those of us who care deeply about the constitutional protections the court put in place for women’s access to abortion,” said Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “We are deeply concerned. ... Yesterday’s decision shows the court will reach out to take an opportunity to wholesale reverse a precedent the hard right has never liked.”

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“It is worrisome beyond the direct impact of yesterday’s ruling on election law,” said, Jessica Arons, the director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress. “It’s certainly cause for concern.”

Critics said the court’s 5-4 ruling in the Citizens United case Thursday declared unconstitutional a law which has been in place since 1907 barring corporations from involvement in federal elections. Just six years ago, the Supreme Court called the longstanding ban “firmly embedded in our law.” Now, it’s gone.

Abortion rights advocates said the willingness of the court’s majority to toss aside precedent undercut Chief Justice John Roberts’s assurances at his confirmation hearings in 2005 that he would tread lightly when it came to rulings like Roe v. Wade.

“It's settled as a precedent of the court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis,” Roberts said then. “To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the judges, they need to be bound down by rules and precedents. ... I do think that it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a precedent. Precedent plays an important role in promoting stability and evenhandedness.”

“Yeah, it’s settled law — until you get enough votes in your favor,” Arons scoffed Friday. “Then it’s, ‘We respect precedent, but we still overturn it.’”

A lawyer who regularly argues before the Supreme Court, Tom Goldstein of Akin Gump, said the abortion rights supporters were right to be worried in the wake of Thursday’s decision.

“Some of the Supreme Court doesn’t like some of the court’s O’Connor-era abortion jurisprudence just like they don’t like some of the O’Connor-era jurisprudence on campaign finance,” Goldstein said. “Abortion is one of the areas where there is a long string of cases conservatives believe is totally misguided.”

Goldstein said the campaign finance decision indicates that the court is increasingly willing to break with previous precedents when it comes to “the really central questions of constitutional law,” which include abortion, gay rights, the death penalty and church-state issues.

“Those are questions I think the court thinks you just have to get right. Just because someone else got there first doesn’t give it any greater claim to legitimacy,” Goldstein added.